Mostrando resultados por Editor "Penguin Audio" en Histórico

'As a diarist I have chronicled the time through which I have lived in meticulous detail: but all that is history. What matters now is the future for those who will live through it. The past is the past but there may be lessons to be learned which could help the next generation to avoid mistakes their parents and grandparents made. Certainly at my age I have learned an enormous amount from the study of history.' (Tony Benn)

Alan Johnson's childhood was not so much difficult as unusual, particularly for a man who was destined to become Home Secretary. Not in respect of the poverty, which was shared with many of those living in the slums of postwar Britain, but in its transition from two-parent family to single mother and then to no parents at all.... This is essentially the story of two incredible women: Alan's mother, Lily, who battled against poor health, poverty, domestic violence and loneliness to try to ensure a better life for her children; and his sister, Linda, who had to assume an enormous amount of responsibility at a very young age and who fought to keep the family together.

Adam Smith is now widely regarded as 'the father of modern economics' and the most influential economist who ever lived. But what he really thought, and what the implications of his ideas are, remain fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent advocate of capitalism and the freedom of the individual? Or a prime mover of 'market fundamentalism' and an apologist for inequality and human selfishness? This exceptional book, by a writer who combines to an unusual degree intellectual training and practical political experience, dispels the myths and caricatures and gives us Smith in the round.

As she fell in love, first with Prince Charles and then with her sons, William and Harry, the world fell in love with the young royal family—Diana most of all. With one son destined to be king and one needing to find his own way, she taught them lessons about royal tradition and also real life. 'William and Harry will be properly prepared', Diana once promised. 'I am making sure of this'. Even after her tragic death, the strength of her love for her sons remains an enduring inspiration, not only for the two princes, but for the entire world.

Henrietta Maria is the most reviled consort to have worn the crown of Britain's Three Kingdoms. Condemned as that 'Popish brat of France', a 'notorious whore' and traitor, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches and turned her husband Catholic—so causing a civil war—and a cruel and bigoted mother. Leanda de Lisle's White King was hailed as 'the definitive modern biography about Charles I' (Observer). Here she considers Henrietta Maria's point of view, unpicking the myths to reveal a very different queen.

The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable … In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot.Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother.

Berlin, September 1944. Ulrich von Hassell, former ambassador to Italy and a key member of the German Resistance, is executed for his part in an assassination plot against Hitler. In response to the attack, Himmler, leader of the SS, orders the arrest of all the families of the plotters. In a remote castle in Italy, von Hassell's beloved daughter, Fey, is discovered just when she thought she had escaped the Nazi net. She is arrested, and her two sons, ages three and two, are seized by the SS.

Svenja’s beautiful, aloof grandmother Inge never spoke about the past. All her family knew was that she had grown up in a city that no longer exists on any map: Königsberg in East Prussia, a footnote in history, a place that almost no one has heard of today. But when Svenja impulsively visits this windswept Baltic city, something unlocks in Inge and finally, she begins to tell her story. It begins in the secret jazz bars of Hitler’s Berlin. It is a story of passionate first love, betrayal, terror, flight, starvation and violence.

Brothers in War is the immensely powerful story of eight Beechey brothers, and how they paid the ultimate price for King and country in the Great War. Some were keen to enlist from the start, others were conscripted and some dead against. Eventually, all eight would be swept up into its devastating path as, despite astonishing displays of courage and strength of character, they met their fates on the battlefields of France, Flanders, East Africa, and Gallipoli.

Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel. Their name is synonymous with American royalty. Their commitment to public service is legendary. But, for all the successes, the family has been blighted by assassinations, murder, fatal accidents, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse and sex scandals.

Christopher Wood, a beautiful young Englishman, decided to be the greatest painter the world had seen. He went to Paris in 1921. By day, he studied; by night, he attended the parties of the beau monde. He knew Picasso, worked for Diaghilev and was a friend of Cocteau. In the last months of his 29-year life, he fought a ravening opium addiction to succeed in claiming a place in history of English painting.

The Beecheys were a close-knit family, eight brothers and five sisters under the loving eye of their widowed mother, Amy. As the First World War raged across Europe and beyond, the brothers were one-by-one swept up into its devastating path.

There are few labels not attached to Aphra Behn - playwright, poet, a spy, a scarlet woman condemned for loose morals. And yet, for all her notoriety Aphra Behn is an enigma. Born in around 1640, her early life isn't well recorded and facts about her are continually disputed. Her birth name may have been Eaffrey Johnson and she could have been the daughter of a Canterbury barber, although neither fact is certain. And, just after the Restoration she probably briefly lived in the English colony of Surinam in South America, where she was perhaps embroiled in political espionage.

"I dragged my heels all the way to the mill. ‘I can’t do it!’ I sulked. Mother sighed and shook her head. My heart sank. Of course, I’d seen the mill hundreds of times before, but now it was different - now, I was going in. I’d never seen a place so depressing; I wanted to cry." With tales from hardworking Audrey and mischievous Maureen to high-spirited Doris and dedicated Marjorie, The Mill Girls is an evocative story of hardship and friendship from when cotton was still king.

Helen-Alice Dear was only 15 when she left London to visit Bulgaria on a family holiday in 1937. Just weeks after her arrival, she found herself unable to leave and struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile and terrifying environment. Her marriage to a Bulgarian man bore her four children but they were often homeless, cold and hungry. Despite these hardships, Helen refused to give up hope and bravely managed to protect and raise her family.

Chris Hunter has the most dangerous job in the world in the most dangerous place in the world: he's responsible for bomb disposal in the British sector of Iraq, pitted against some of the most ruthless and technically advanced terrorists in the world. It is a 24/7 job; his team defused over 45 bombs in the first two months alone. And the people they're up against don't play by the Geneva Convention. For them, there are no rules, only results.

Exploding pressure cookers, a thwarted wife's deadly revenge, and transvestites in distress - manning an ambulance in the '70s kept you on your toes. Having survived the rites of passage as a probationer, Les Pringle now has to face up to the reality of life as an ambulance man in Thatcher's Britain. He does this with humour and fortitude - two qualities which are essential if he is to cope with cases ranging from the absurd to the heartrending. From attending murder scenes to delivering babies...it's quite a life for Les and one that he and his shift mates tread with warmth and humour in equal measure.

On 21 July 1942, the Nazis invaded Poland. In the small town of Zolkiew, life for Jewish 15-year-old Clara Kramer was never to be the same again. While those around her were either slaughtered or transported, Clara and her family hid perilously in a hand-dug cellar. Living above and protecting them were the Becks. Mr Beck was a womaniser, a drunkard, and a self-professed anti-Semite, yet he risked his life throughout the war to keep his charges safe.

Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia were captivated by each other from the moment they first exchanged glances across the work floor. It was the beginning of a love story that could have happened anywhere. Except for one difference: this romance was unfolding in history's most notorious death camp, between two young prisoners whose budding intimacy risked dooming them if they were caught. Incredibly, David and Zippi survived for years beneath the ash-choked skies of Auschwitz.

From being transported by the sound of 'True Love' by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly on the radio as a small child living in condemned housing in ungentrified West London in the late 1950s to going out to work as a postman humming 'Watching the Detectives' by Elvis Costello in 1977, Alan Johnson's life has always had a musical soundtrack. In fact music hasn't just accompanied his life, it's been an integral part of it.